"We've had five deaths so far," he said. "That's really high for us. We maybe get one or two deaths in an average year."

In addition to the fatalities, EPD has also seen 210 injury traffic accidents since the start of the year, Whitmer said. Those accidents range from minor injuries -- like a sore finger, Whitmer said -- to a major injury, like a broken neck.

The numbers are frustrating for Whitmer, who has been working in the traffic division for a number of years.

"My job, as senior traffic officer, is to try to reduce the collision rate," he said. "We can do education, we can try to engineer the streets to make them safer, but really what we need to do is to go out there and do a lot of enforcement. You can educate people till you are blue in the face, but tickets are what really get attention."

But, Whitmer said, with the recent spike in crime across Eureka, it's hard to find the time and money to keep officers on traffic duty. In August, Police Chief Murl Harpham reported that petty crime rates in Eureka are soaring past last year's averages.

"Property crime is up 10 percent, larceny is up 32 percent and car theft is up 102 percent," Harpham said. "These numbers are just skyrocketing. We are getting hit hard."

Harpham also said that arrests in the city are up 20 percent. Those numbers take their toll on traffic enforcement, according to Whitmer.

"We are constantly handling so many other types of crime, we really don't have the time we need to focus on traffic," Whitmer said. "A lot of what we do, consequently, is just reactive."

Whitmer said he hopes the $60,000 grant will provide the incentive to get his officers back out doing proactive enforcement. Through the grant -- which funds a year-long program aimed at preventing roadway injuries and deaths -- Whitmer said his officers will be able to volunteer for overtime patrols. That includes DUI, cell phone and texting patrols, as well as patrols aimed specifically at reducing primary collision factors like vehicle code violations, driving at unsafe speeds and running stop signs. Whitmer said the best part of the grant is that officers working on the overtime patrols will not be required to answer calls for other types of service.

"Unless there is a major emergency, they will be left just to focus on traffic service," he said. "It's always fun to not have to come out and handle a bunch of other calls."

Whitmer said he can't imagine what the department statistics would look like if the grant funding didn't exist.

"If you add up all of the hours that these officers will be going out on patrol thanks to this grant, you realize there is just no way they could do that while on regular duty," he said. "This really is a great service to the community."